My room is in order, I have a bulletin board in the hallway, the desks and chairs and tables are arranged, and we have an agenda for tomorrow. I guess I’m ready.

I’m fucking TIRED though. I almost want to go to bed NOW, I’m so tired. I was at school for 10 hours, a bunch of it spent doing assessment crap that will probably be undone in three months, and I am just tired. I’m interested, at the very least, in seeing my kids. Almost excited.

See, I get excited about my job until the assessment and NCLB crap kicks in. I am trying to be positive, to remember that the kids come first and fuck the government. Do what’s best for kids. Then, worry about the paperwork.

Part of our hoo-ha tomorrow is reading “Through the Cracks” aloud to the kids. It’s a picture book that speaks well to my program; how kids fall through the cracks if all they do is “watch” school. How participation and integration and teambuilding is what pulls the kids back up from the cracks, and that’s cool.

I ordered it from Amazon, last-minute, but it arrived today in the nick of time. The supplemental book to qualify for free shipping was 40,001 Best Baby Names, the last book I’ll BUY regarding such, I promise, but one I’ve wanted for months. I like Old Hag names (Henrietta — Etta, Wilhelmina, Griselda, Gilda) and Dave likes more common ones, and variants of my own (Samantha, Greta, Gretel) so we need to meet in the middle. He liked Gret-names before he met me, and has a real thing for unpronounceable Scandinavian words that may or may not be actual names. I won’t let there be a Gretchen-lite, but I do like having a strong German name, and baby will have a German surname, so that’s cool. But I don’t want my kid to be named after a Swedish toaster manufacturer or something, either.

Interesting dream last night: I was trying to console a distraught James Hetfield (yes, of Metallica) because he was devastated that the Mobil station and convenience store back home did NOT carry Dilly (A Canadian dill pickle flavor) Chips. He was seriously crying and shit. I felt bad.

Anyway, here is an interesting article by, for, and about new or impending fatherhood.